Golden Retrievers

Good Men Down

[03:05 Output]

Jane Meneely

There was no question in Thompson Wallace to go mind that day. He was in debt and had broken the ice for good. He was in possession of the Claud W. Somers Bonito less than a year, and he was determined to look good on her make-it was the embodiment to own its own long-held dream dredgeboat. When the wind came, and the rest of the oyster fleet headed home, he remained in the open water set at the mouth of the river Honga, determined to get in a few licks. Then back to the top chance, the little harbor on the island narrows deal that he had left before dawn that morning in March. He was not concerned about the weather, although he knew as well as anyone how treacherous the spring could be storms, as they sneak up on you and you hammer to pieces. What he did not know was that building today, the wind to near hurricane strength, and that neither he nor his crew ever set on dry land foot again.

The people who live on Deal Iceland is still shaking his head about what happened on 4 March 1977. The details they provide are different in one Dimensions, because so many people witnessed the event from as many different perspectives, but one thing is certain, they remember the tragedy as if it happened yesterday is, instead of almost 30 years ago. Some of the witnesses have since passed, but the community of water sports, which continues on the waters of the Strait Hooper work, Tangier Sound and the bay beyond, has preserved their stories and woven them into the fabric of island life.

I saw this for me when I started to ask questions about the Claud W. Somers. I had to Wenona, Md., the harbor at the end of the deal Iceland and home to some of the Bay's last remaining active Skipjacks driven. I had gone to Holland Arby's little shop next to the shipyard and has been with Arby's father Paul chat. The elder Holland had a small table where he himself another hand of solitaire parked. He told me what he knew about the Somerstragedy, but he could not remember the name of the man who had offered Wallace a tow bar. "Wait a Second. These fellows know, "he said, nodding toward CRABBER ST Webster and one of his friends in the parking lot. Both wore white rubber boots, and ubiquitous Ball caps of the working watermen. When they came to get some moving boxes for soft crabs, to background music Holland: "You guys remember who the The young man in towed away? Fellow up Wingate, perhaps? "

Webster frowned, and I thought he would say: "What guys? When? "But he knew who meant Holland." Do not remember right, "he said," but I bet Corbin would know Grant. Webster grabbed a Package of crackers and entered the conversation. "Thompson was a good Waterman, a lot of experience. I saw him sailing into the dock many a time. It is a shame that all the "He said, reminding us that all who were related but one of the Wallace-crew on that day together.

In my search for life memory of the incident, I finally spoke to Grant Corbin, I also spoke with Elsworth Hoffman, former head of the local DNR, which monitors the search when the boat did not return be, I spoke with many years of Captain Art Daniels Bonito, I spoke with Esther Wallace, Thompson's widow, and Kevin Wallace, Thompson's son, I said Donald Mills, who went into the misty darkness after the storm to try and find the men I spoke with Don Simmons, whose father was an officer DNR Jennings Simmons, with the group, and found the bodies retrieved, I said to Snooks Windsor, the increase in Somers from the soil once it has been found, sank in 20 feet of water at the mouth River Honga helped, and who saw the corpses of the drowned were brought ashore Wingate. I spoke with anyone I could find who had no recollection of the event and gradually the Claud Somers W. 's story began to emerge.

Wallace Thompson was born and raised Deal Iceland. He was one of 23 children (yes, 23), the children of Robert Waterman and James Roseana Wallace. According to all reports, he was affable and popular, and he had a streak of the devil. Afraid of nothing to say them. And he was ambitious. He had his eyes on his own boat have appointed a day, come hell or high water.

Wallace worked on and around boats his whole life. He was one-of-all-trades, he and Jack many other people's boats-boats had been captain. His name appears on the list for 1971 Chesapeake Appreciation Days skipjack races as the Captain of the Ida May, Elbert Gladden of possession. When Claud W. Somers up for sale, Wallace was finally ready to buy. The boat was a sorry mess, to be sure. She licked like a sieve and the engine was on their boat dinghy at best unreliable. But it was not much worse off than some of the other boats in the fleet total Dredge Deal Iceland 35 vessels at the time. And there was nothing wrong with her that Wallace could not fix.

The Somers came from good stock. It was built on Virginia's Eastern Shore by Tom Young in 1911, named on behalf of Thomas Edward Somers, a Crisfield businessman, and his son Claud Williams Somers. She was 461 / 2 feet long, with a 14-foot beam, and fast. Co-owner then Curwin Captain Evans in the lead, which they chines dredgeboats the rest of the whipped cream on the 1931 skipjack races the last before The Second World War. More than 30 years later, they all whipped again, this time with the Captain Linwood Benton tax.

But by the time the boat by Jack Wallace Parkinson bought in the spring 1976, its glory days were over. Wallace brought her around Eldon Willing's shipyard in opportunity and to work. With the start of the season Dredge, he would have reasonably Sound at least by his standards, and he was no slouch in Carpentry and repair boats. She had almost sunk in the dock will be every morning, but he had the Pump go and they would float back soon enough. She was not the only Bonito known to take a little water over night. In addition, water collection has always old ladies of plague.

Wallace took all their problems to do in buying what he could for the boat if he had the time or the money, after payment of their "mortgage" there was not left to a lot of money. He held it together with sweat and prayers often. There were people on the island, who told him to his face that he is a fool, that decrepit Boat was that he wanted to drown someone. But there were plenty of others that he knew what he was doing, and would be patterned as generations of oystermen before him.

The winter of 1976-77 had been a bad season all around. There were not many oysters with MSX-start had begun to devastate the already dwindling oyster beds. And what is worse the Bay was frozen solid for two months, shrinking the number of days the water sports was even able to open water. The water sports enthusiasts the deal were desperate Iceland, again to work when the ice finally breaks up to the end of February during a welcome warm spell. Within days, had the ice has melted, save for the large had heaps of broken glass on the shore ice is pushed by the wind and tides. Even more welcome was the news that the DNR had the oyster season extended two weeks on the usual March 15 cut off.

It was gusty, that Friday morning, 4 March, with four-foot seas and 15 to 30 miles an hour winds. In all likelihood it was going to get worse. Boats Wenona "saw" the wind, under Article Daniels, Captain of the city Bonito Crisfield. She did not go out that day. But the chance port is blowing from a sheltered south, and 55-year-old Wallace Thompson went on his boat in the early morning hours and pressed it to run as usual for the day. His team assembled: his older brother, "Big George" Wallace, 64 years, and his nephew, Carter Wallace, age 20, his wife's cousin Thomas James, 20 years old, his son Gerald Wallace, age 24 and on leave from the Marines, and a non-relative, Levin Johnson, 44 years. Another son, Kevin Wallace, 15 years, was on the dock ready to join when he called home unexpectedly. "I was there in the dock, as they went, but for some reason I can not remember, I did not go with them on that day, "he says now. Another regular crew member, Earl White, who died recently, had remained at home, "Not even out of bed," he told me. He knew Gerald would take his place.

Captain Elsworth Hoffman, a Department of Natural Resources Chance of police officers, the round went through the port and Wallace advised not to go that day. Reports indicated severe weather in developing later in the afternoon. This was not enough to deter Wallace. In the dim light of dawn, he began his dinghy boat motor and loosened the Bonito away from the dock. TheSomers displaced of Chance North port in Tangier Sound, ran past Sharkfin Shoal and along the northern coast of the island Bloodworth heading for the dredging ground off Iceland in the near Hooper the mouth of the river Honga. Every boat that went on that day would have left the dock in the dark, to the oyster will "rock" when the sun is higher increased, so as not to leak a single act "of miss the oyster bank. How hunters can not harvest their Skipjacks begin until sunrise, but at sunrise they start doing.

Wallace would have been willing to have for each breeze that he liked it so he left the protection of the harbor. His team would be the mainsail have reefed the night before. This was common practice for a bonito, it is always easier to shake a reef, but to put everyone, especially on a cold winter morning. Wallace certainly sniffed the breeze in the morning and had his reefs in-three of them. A true does not require as much wind, but in order to draw a digger. If it's too much speed building, the only dredge bounce at the bottom. The master of the wind gauge will rise and what he must fit the conditions of his mainsail. Wallace did not need much Screen this morning.

Then as now, a real was allowed to 150 bushels of oysters held in one day, but by the late 1970s, especially in the lower Bay, where MSX was more common, no one was pulling in 150 bushels per day. Half that would be a wonderful haul oysterman for the deal. When the wind really began to kick at noon, had Wallace did some good but not good enough to stop. The other Bonito is working on that day in the lead, while Wallace was still a few "spikes" Get-The Waterman's name for a full dredge. He got more than he bargained for. From all accounts the wild winds were at this afternoon. Landlubbers they clocked in 75 miles per hour. Paul Holland, works like an oyster buyers in Wenona then, he says, blowing 80 to 85 at its peak. Long before the crest of the storm began after Wallace home. That's when all hell took over. He began to have trouble with the quirky boat dinghy engine, and could not Sun

Buddy Jones, tonging on board his boat, the Dana Matt was there for hightailing chance if he passed the Claud W. Somers bound for Hooper Strait, according to an account in the SalisburyDaily Times, 7 March 1977 printed. Jones said it looked like Wallace had difficulty, he pulled alongside and offered to help. Wallace took Jones's replacement battery hoping it would help to launch his dinghy boat. When those efforts failed, Wallace Jones offered a tow bar. "I towed her over ten miles in the first two hours," Jones told the newspaper. "If Hooper Street, we met, we were really in trouble. "He said that until then had 70 hours, the winds reached 15 miles-foot seas, and the rope go out of his cleats. Jones refastened, but the line going again. Fear for his safety, drew his life jacket and Jones said Wallace and his crew left the boat and on board of the Dana Matt. Wallace went and said: "We will try to save them!" Buddy Jones said he would get help for them and drove away. Looking back he saw that Thomas James put on a jacket and had climbed into the dinghy's skipjack tuna boat, started probably in another experiment, the motor.

By then, the art Daniel Somers seen go, but he had not seen, they come back. He called the DNR to tell them Wallace could get into trouble. Corporal Walton Webster went out look for the missing boat, but the conditions were so rough, he turned back. When the Somers was not back in port by 5 clock, Elsworth Hoffman, the DNR officer opportunity, decided to go look for it yourself. He went to his boat, but could not run the engine. Conditions had deteriorated so much of that time, he recalls that, even if he got the boot would, he was not sure he could have done it Open Water. Back in his office, at sunset, he got a call from the tug Radio Interstate, probably The direction of Salisbury with a train of coal. The tug reported that he had a boat in distress in Hooper Strait. From his description, Hoffman figured it was probably the Somers, but helpless he was to do something, DNR and other boats were too far away. He could only wait and hope that the fearless and able to ride or Wallace might be on his boat protected by water. Perhaps he already had.

Word spread quickly that Wallace was in difficulties. When the weather subsided, those who went for it might look like, and the Coast Guard and DNR began looking for an all-out. Donald Mills of Bishops Head, remembers that there was a dense fog of the night. He pushed a 55-gallon drum used in water-swim the way a real captain would have to wear gas for the crown of the engine. "I knew I was close, and I looked. Seeing, that drum, I knew the boat was knocked down, but I thought maybe some of the guys would hang on the mast. "He found nothing.

Some According to reports from researchers looked Wingate, Md., the dinghy boat about 9 clock It had broken from the Bonito and had washed on the beach at Bishops Head. A few hours later the body of Thomas James, still in a life jacket was found floating between

Bishops and the head of Hooper Strait Light and would-be rescuers knew that chances of finding the skipjack or the rest of his crew were low. was between the fog and darkness, the visibility is zero. At this point, almost midnight, concentrated they concentrate their efforts on the area where James's body had been found, thinking that Wallace Hooper Street had left running before the wind towards the port on Wingate. Or perhaps he had deliberately tried to run her into the shallow water at them from the immersion when they sank to hold. Helicopters with searchlights swept the area but found still nothing.

Finally, just before midnight, Henry Gootee of Golden Hill discovered the boat on the radar, west and north, where people were looking for. "You know, one area can now, for something on the radar that does not belong out there to see, "he says from his office at Gootee's Marine in Church Creek. He had left its dock at 7:30 in the clock after hearing that a boat was in trouble. In the deep darkness, he had his eyes on his radar screen as much as on the water peeled before. One by one the known markers on his screen as he was expected, but something unusual was found in the water above the Hooper street light. Sure enough, when he worked his way closer and could put a spotlight on himself, he could see the top of the Somers's mast tilting out of the water around 300 meters in front of Norman's Cove. There was no sign of life.

News of the discovery spread quickly, and in the morning as many as 50 boats had gathered on the site. Captain Ben Parks of Cambridge reminds position Hooper Iceland with his father aboard the family boat. The Hooper Iceland volunteer fire department, he says, drag is the only "body" around, and they were repeatedly asked to use it. Not a pretty machine, to hear him describe. It is three times a long iron bar on wheels, with sharp, Hook it dangling. "There is no hitch," says Parks. He climbed aboard the boat police Officer Harold Pritchett help drag, but they were out of luck. Back and forth, back and forth, they combed the entire area around the skipjack tuna to no avail. Only Charles Abbott and some of the men from the accident had moved slightly to her from the Bonito Ground that the bodies of four men and Levin Wallace Johnson was found underneath the boat's mast to hoist. One after the other men were taken on board and the police boat Wingate made, public Wharf.

"I remember the boys are in the police boat like it was yesterday," says Snooks Windsor, on the quay was when the boats come in, he still operates a marina and train there. "It is not something that you probably forgot."

Meanwhile, the Claud W. Somers was towed away and swam back to opportunity. Thirty-three bushels of oysters lying on the deck. Within a month she DK Bond, it is from the Chesapeake Beach, Md. was now it was sold in the possession and sailed by the Reedville Fishermen's Museum, one of only a few built-Virginia Skipjacks left.

No one can say how or why the Somers until the end of the river mouth Honga when, by Buddy Jones's account was, the boat was almost by Hooper street when he left her to get help. Captain Ed Farley of Skipjack HM Krentz from Tilghman, speculates that the yawl boat, with Thomas James on board and try to start the engine, must have broken free of the Somers. Wallace can have tried to chase the boat to retrieve the boy. The skipjack tuna, loaded with oysters, and no doubt under the water pump it out faster than you, but failed and settled at the bottom with its load of oysters still on the deck.

Regardless of the how and why, the result remains the same. It is part of the burden of working on Water. Boats sink drown, people. Perhaps the history of the Claud W. Somers is still so deeply embedded in the local store, just because nobody ever really know what happened. Or perhaps the telling and retelling of such a history is a community first line of defense, a warning to his children on the whims of nature and the Hazards in the work of the water. It is after all a warning, and everyone, "Coming up on the water," as the islanders would put it, should You note the lesson.

About the Author

By Jane Meneely, writer for Chesapeake Bay Magazine. For more great articles and photos on boating, sailing, fishing, and cruising, visit http://www.ChesapeakeBoating.net